Girls Education Initiative of Ghana (GEIG)

The Girls Education Initiative of Ghana provides academic and financial support for girls, including applicants with special needs so they can access higher education and professional opportunities.

GEIG transforms the lives of young women in Ghana and improves development and poverty reduction in the country overall by offering higher education and professional opportunities to an untapped source of talent.

Elizabeth Patterson is the Director and founder of the Girls Education Initiative of Ghana (GEIG). Patterson oversees the implementation of our mission and objectives, sources funding and builds partnerships and networks. 

Patterson developed a three-pronged holistic support model to support girls in education. She also devised the Read to Grow (an e-reader literacy) programme and manages the community empowerment and leadership workshops. Her work is replicable and scalable and its content can be adapted as new ideas, challenges and concepts become relevant.

Patterson’s primary focus is working for girls and young women in the Ashanti and Greater Accra regions of Ghana. Additionally, her work influences 3,000 girls and community members a year through activities such as mentoring workshops, professional development and advancement activities, skills training and an e-reader project that improves literacy among school children. 

Patterson is also an advocate for education and literacy in Ghana and has been recognised by numerous organizations. Ms Patterson is a 2022 Acumen West Africa fellow, was the 2015 Vlisco Brand Ambassador for Ghana, and a Young African Leadership Initiative Regional Leadership Center-Accra (YALI RLC) fellow among other awards and acknowledgements.

Our team lead will prioritise participation in LEAP while ensuring GEIG continues running smoothly. Patterson’s work at GEIG is supported by a functioning team with roots in the community. Our programs team consists of:

• Elizabeth A. N. Patterson, Project Lead
• Andrews Nii Awuley Lartey, Co- Director
• Seth Lasidji, Communications Associate
• Fortune Kyei, Consortium Project Lead
• Tracy Osei Wusu, Administrative Associate
• Linda Emefa Agbotse, Human Resource Associate

GEIG also has a project assistant and regularly takes on interns who support Patterson in GEIG administration and project implementation. 

Two other board members are available to fill in where required in GEIG strategic matters; Andrews Nii Awuley Lartey, who serves as the Director, Business Development, Strategy and STEAM at GEIG. He is a founding member of Kumasi Hive,co-founder and past country director for Women In Tech Africa; and Ann Paisely Chandler is an experienced fundraiser and development consultant.

The Read to Grow project, our solution, is implemented using multiple delivery mechanism- a community approach where we partner with community institutions( libraries, churches, mosques, schools etc). We are currently implementing in partnership between GEIG and the Act Community Library of Alpha Beta Educational Centre, Brenda Kings and Queens Academy, Nancy International in the Abbey-Prampram communities, and Bentsel School System in Kumasi-Amakom. As such, the complexities and personnel requirements of running a reasonably large project are spread out among many committed staff in these organisations, who take on many roles including mentoring child participants. We currently have 15 volunteers at 6 sites in 3 regions and 1500 students thus far.

Read To Grow, using e-readers to strengthen early childhood literacy in children of low income families

GEIG exists to counter the impact of low-quality and lack of access to education in Ghana, especially among women, girls and people with disabilities.

In 2019, according to UNICEF, only 42% of girls in Ghana completed secondary school, many leaving due to early marriage, pregnancy and poverty. GEIG believes that if communities could see the advantages of education, children being able to read and write well then they would be more willing to invest in keeping girls in school. However several sources link low educational attainment to the absence of reading material. In 2018 reported that in Ghana only 2% of pupils in lower primary school could read at the expected level for their age. 

Children in low-income schools especially do not have access to books. Children from low-income communities, especially girls, therefore lack the reading material they need to develop fluent literacy skills especially in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education in primary school. The quality of education in Ghana has been shown to be low in 2015, 21.1% of Ghanaian sixth-grade students had not learned to read. This low quality reduces the probability that children will stay in school. It also decreases the future return of any qualifications. The outcome is less incentive for parents to invest in education.

Education and literacy are drivers of economic growth, yet the price of books, distribution constraints and copyrights make them difficult to obtain. The government has limited resources for schools, books, and the other materials students need. Parents are usually responsible for providing textbooks as well as covering other costs through fees. 

Many non-profits have projects that provide traditional print books. However, books in their traditional form are not always the best solution: large numbers of books are required to cater to different needs and abilities, and carrying heavy loads of books is impractical for students who have to walk long distances to class. 

GEIG has identified e-readers as a solution to unequal access to books. E-readers provide nearly instantaneous access to reading material. However, these devices are unattainable for children from low-income families. GEIG therefore committed itself to reducing the unequal access to reading material and improving literacy among girls who are already in school by making e-readers widely available. 

Read To Grow is an Early Childhood Literacy program targeting over 50,000 students and community participants in basic schools across Ghana. It addresses the fact that many students in underserved communities possess leadership potential but cannot read and write as expected at their grade.

Methodology: GEIG and its partners run virtual sessions with schools during school hours which last for an hour. The students each have an e-reader as well as access to mentors and teachers. The students are aged between 8 and 15. 

The project does not currently have a targeted learning variability aspect and is currently focused on children who have poor literacy skills due to economic drivers. The project applies differentiated learning and instruction in lesson planning to ensure all students are accessing information in an individualized manner. We employ methods that cater to visual, auditory, tactile, and activity based learning methods to name a few.

Both USAID and Worldreader have assessed the impact of increased access to reading material among children in Ghana. They found that: 

• E-readers are easy for children to learn to use 
• Children read more using an e-reader than before.

• Students’ technological skills improve and 
• Participants show an increased performance on standardized scores 

Additionally a randomized controlled trial in Zambia in 2019 showed that in an e-reader intervention targeted to students in Grade 7 students showed improved literacy, numeracy and non-verbal reasoning. Reports also suggested that on average girls given e-reader spent significantly more time reading than girls without.

The Read to Grow project is a partnership between GEIG, and the Reach for Change Ghana and the Jacobs Foundation. The project commenced its work in the Ablekuma West Municipality. In collaboration with communities and schools, the joint effort is expected to complement what teachers teach in the classroom. GEIG will use various approaches to reach the students, using both virtual and physical means to deliver the literacy lessons for easy understanding and participation. 

We conducted foundational research as part of our funding application

We have conducted an impact and progress review at the fourth month of our project in 2023.

Our four-month impact and progress review recorded the following among 52 participants in 3 schools:

Improved interaction skills

As an observation made by a GEIG staff at the initial stage, students were timid and not active during these live virtual sessions as projected, however, there has been a turn of events as students now demonstrate improved social and interaction skills. That is to say, they engage the moderator with relevant questions and meaningful feedback. This is also evident in how they interact with their teachers, peers, and even people outside their age bracket, both in school and in their communities.

Improved diction and expanded vocabulary

We noted an improvement in their diction during our brief interaction with them sometimes on their opinions about the initiative. Their vocabularies have been expanded as evidenced by the short essay assignments (take home assignments) they are requested to present in the upcoming sessions, as well as when they are asked to define or spell words that may seem difficult for their level.

Developed and Improved critical thinking skills

According to a class teacher at Nancy International who serves as a mentor during these sessions, most of the kids from the program have become more creative with their words and gained a better understanding of certain topics being taught in class. Their critical thinking skills are also being developed with this initiative.

Access to important information

They have access to some important information about the rest of the globe and their own nation. Because they can read and comprehend the news, they are aware of their surroundings and up to date with events going on around them.

Improved confidence and boldness in the student

Through this project, students have learned to be confident with their words, even if they make a mistake. They have gained a command of the English language and learned to construct and use correct tenses, among other things. They have also been taught to correct their peers' grammar errors rather than laugh because correcting others' mistakes helps build their own. 

The majority of in-class activities are carried out in groups, so the kids are getting used to working in teams. This teaches students the significance of working in teams which allows them to be more open-minded to the many ideas put forth by the different group members and the idea that by working together, they can accomplish more than working alone.

We also realized that there was a potential for monetization, which would ensure the long-term sustainability of the project:

1. Develop app or web platform where participants literary works are published and downloaded for a fee
2. Make literacy curriculum available to schools and educators for a fee
3. Private Public Partnerships- solicit corporations to sponsor underserved students in underserved communities
4. Fee payment for online courses 

GEIG has based our intervention on the generally reported or casually observed trends in literacy among low income communities in Ghana. We use children’s school performance as a proxy for literacy and from our observations and in school testing we can see an improvement in the children's literacy.

However, incorporating measurable outcomes into our program, and structuring our intervention so that we can collect evidence about its effectiveness, will assist us with evaluating our programs, making improvements for the future of our program as well as providing valuable evidence about using e-readers for literacy among children with low-income backgrounds. This would mean our findings will bear far greater weight and be far more compelling than the documentation we have now, which may have unseen flaws or biases. We wish to use good research principles which will allow for other projects to reproduce our findings.

Our research needs include

• Justification for the need for the Read to Grow project for learners with specific characteristics
• To help streamline our predicted outcomes 
• To formulate relevant and durable indicators and means of verification
• To ensure the impartiality of our results
• To ensure that we capture critical information about our participants, intervention model, outcomes, and impact

1. What is the most efficient scaling strategy for increasing the use and impact of e-readers in low-income communities in Ghana?

2. What is the most optimal curriculum (engagement strategy) for students in order to make the greatest improvement in reading skills?

3. What are the most effective strategies for including learning variability in the Read to Grow curriculum?

a.         A scaling strategy that gives Read to Grow evidence-based direction on how to expand the number of participants in its program while ensuring the quality of its impact. The strategy would

●          Identify key partnerships and possible support networks necessary to underpin a long-term sustainable expansion of the programme.

●          Formulate key performance indicators that would be applicable to both GEIG and its partners to ensure the project quality is maintained

b.         A curriculum or model of engagement which outlines how best the e-readers are to be used to improve children’s literacy. We would use LEAP’s access to a global pool of research to access information that is not readily available to the general public, especially, if available, correlational studies; quasi-experimental studies and randomized control studies that may have been conducted in this field. We would use this to refine our interactions with students by training the teachers and other staff involved in the project and formalising our model by sharing it with others in the field.

c.         A strategy on how to include children with a wider range of learning variabilities, including different forms physical and learning disabilities. Our current operations do not have a complete learning variability component, a critical part of GEIG’s mission is to ensure a quality education for children with disabilities, however as Read to Grow is still a relatively young intervention, the inclusion of children with disabilities has yet to be addressed in depth. This strategy would call upon MIT’s global reach allowing us to incorporate tested and verified means of including learning variability in our project.

d.         A plan or list of recommendations on monitoring and evaluation of Read to Grow with the specific purpose of strengthening the evidence base of our project. This will include recommendations for data and information and an analysis of available and affordable M&E digital platforms. 

Our overall strategy is to scale and replicate our intervention by first generating data on its efficacy and then seeking partners and funders to support its roll out at our other partner schools. 

• A critical activity would be to hold an event to share the LEAP products with our current partners and other interested parties such as schools, civil society and government officials. This will ensure buy-in from our partners as our actions will be clear to them. We would also invite potential or recommended partners to this event.
• We would revamp our curriculum or model of engagement to optimise how the readers are used to improve children’s literacy. We would use the guidance to refine our interactions with students by 1) developing short training modules for the teachers and other staff involved in the project 2) organizing training sessions both for those involved in our project and educators from similar projects and 3) we would then monitor and evaluate these modifications to ensure an improvement.
• We would begin implementing the strategy of inclusion for children with learning variabilities, including those with physical and intellectual disabilities with the aim of including a significant number within one year of beginning this intervention.
• We would improve our M&E system using the recommendations drawn up during LEAP, including the recommendations for data and information needed      to strengthen the evidence bas of Read to Grow. This revamped system would include the new key performance indicators.
• We would embark upon the scaling strategy with the aim of increasing participation and the quality of our outcomes. We would pursue the key partnerships and other recommendations in the strategy.

Additional activities include

GEIG will review the products with our Board, then share them with our current and potential partners and funders. We will conduct virtual and in-person sharing events to highlight the recommendations and the change, if any, in direction that Read to Grow will take.

During the project implementation, we will give social media updates on project implementation, highlighting improvements, milestones and notable impact in the participants' literacy      journey with emphasis on our progress towards the KPIs. 

Approximately six months after we have put the recommendations and modifications for project implementation into practice we will conduct an evaluation and produce documentation, for instance, e-books, reports, training manuals to share the change with others in our field. 

We will overhaul our M&E system to make our monitoring, evaluation and learning methodology more robust and able to capture the key data and information that will help boost the intervention’s impact.

Short-term outcomes

• Reading and writing skills amongst 50,000 children aged 8-15 are at internationally accepted levels within 18 months
• An optimal methodology for e-reader use for improving reading skills in low-income settings is in use in Ghana and other similar settings within 6 months
• Reading and writing skills among 1,000 children aged 8-15 with learning variability in Ghana improve to internationally accepted levels within 18 months
• 20 teachers have been trained in a new methodology for working with e-readers to improve literacy

Long term outcomes

• Schools in the catchment area report a sufficient amount suitable reading material for children aged 8.15
• 80% of students in grade 4 in the project catchment area have learned to read and write
• 90% of participants successfully proceed to senior high school
• 80% of participants pass their West African Examinations Council certification in the third year of high school
• The number of girls not proceeding to the next year of school is halved

Gender-specific outcomes 

1. 80% of girls in grade 4 in the project catchment area have learned to read and write
2. 80% of girls in the project catchment area show improved performance in reading, writing and English proficiency
3. 50% of project participants over all ages are female
4. 50% of all children with learning variability participating in the project are girls